Carlos Sainz was delighted with his second-place grid start, despite being denied pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix by Max Verstappen in the dying seconds of a thrilling Qualifying session.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard was on provisional pole having posted a lap time prior to a red flag in Q3, caused when Charles Leclerc crashed out at Turn 15, and still remained quickest as another stoppage followed with Drivers’ Championship leader Oscar Piastri in the wall.<\/p>\n
With a one-lap shootout ahead on a sub-optimal circuit caused by drops of rain, it looked like the Spaniard would claim Williams<\/a>‘ first pole in more than a decade, before Verstappen was able to usurp him at the top of the leaderboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Very happy, honestly. We\u2019ve nailed Qualifying today,” admitted Sainz post-session.<\/p>\n “Every time we were on the right tyre at the right time and put together some very strong laps. Obviously the moment that a top car put a lap together, we were always going to be those four or five tenths behind like we always are.<\/p>\n “It was only one of them which was Max \u2013 not surprised. For the rest, we managed to beat them and we are P2 which is great news.<\/p>\n “I\u2019ve been putting good laps together this year in Qualifying \u2013 it hasn\u2019t been my weakness or my issues at all. Today, we proved that the speed of this car and this team is there and delivering in Qualifying when it counts.<\/p>\n “Unfortunately, the year in terms of races and points is not going the way we want, but as long as the speed is there, which today proves, the points and the good races will come. I\u2019m not worried.”<\/p>\n Sainz has endured a difficult season since joining Williams from Ferrari at the start of this season, failing to match team mate Alex Albon’s race performances, having only achieved a best result of P8 this term and he has not scored points in the last six races.<\/p>\n “Try and stick it on the podium,” said Sainz when asked what he hoped to achieve in Sunday’s 51-lap race.<\/p>\n “I\u2019m going to give it my best to give Williams their first podium [with me]. If it\u2019s possible, great, and if not, we will see.”<\/p>\n Albon, meanwhile, will start Sunday’s race from the back of the grid as he crashed out in Q1 after hitting the inside wall at Turn 1, which broke his Williams’ suspension.<\/p>\n “My mistake obviously, bit of a rookie mistake,” he said reflecting on the incident.<\/p>\n “Just got caught out with the difference of grip between my first lap and what was going to be my second lap. Nothing to say really, just a bit disappointing.<\/p>\n “Didn’t need that, we’ve got our work cut out [in the race]. It’s not that easy to make progress around this track so we’ll have to hang tight and see what we can do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Sainz was delighted with his second-place grid start, despite being denied pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-438956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115237638798460993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}